256 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



who are acquainted with the conditions, and who understand 

 the method of furnishing milk to cities like New York, New 

 Haven, or Boston, or any of the larger cities, but what know 

 that the methods that are pursued, or which are employed, are 

 based from the cow to the table upon a knowledge of bacteria. 

 The whole system of the industry is permeated and controlled 

 by the facts that have been developed in the last fifteen years 

 in connection with this little microscopic organism which is 

 capable of so much good, and capable of doing so much evil. 

 Every year, and we may almost say every day, there are new 

 applications in the milk industry of our big cities of the facts 

 that have arisen out of the scientific study of bacteria in milk. 

 The practical results which have followed have been enor- 

 mous, and yet when the subject was first taken up it was not 

 taken up with any practical thought that there was any prac- 

 tical value in it. So now, when we come to the question of 

 dairy experimentation at Storrs, if you ask me why we are 

 doing so and so, I should have to tell you that I do not know. 

 But we are investigating scientific problems with a hope, or 

 with a confidence, with a belief that the results are going to 

 be practical somewhere, but we are not going to bind our- 

 selves to promise you at the start that we are working out 

 practical questions, or even that we shall get practical re- 

 sults from the lines of experimentation which we have ini- 

 tiated. We hope that we shall, but we cannot promise what 

 the results will be. We hope, as Prof. Atwater has already 

 intimated, to get at some of the underlying laws that regulate 

 the phenomena in connection with this subject. There is a 

 vast necessity of getting at these vmderlying laws. The prob- 

 lems which lie before the dairy bacteriologist are complex 

 beyond any conception. The complexity of the problem is 

 indicated, perhaps, a little, by this number, six billion, that we 

 were talking about a little while ago. Perhaps I ought to make 

 a little correction on that. It should not be understood that 

 six billion is a common number for us to find. We usually 

 do not find as many as that. I have known of milk w^here 

 the bacteriologist said he had computed as high as twenty- 

 five billion in a cubic centimeter. These numbers do not 

 mean anything to the mind. They are too vast for compre- 

 hension. These facts, however, indicate a little of the com- 

 plexity of the problem with which we are concerned, but it is 



